The gems of Revelation 21, page-58

Is it irrelevant? I think not, the discussion has already flipped about a bit as it always does.

manney1970 has worded his response a bit crudely probably because the claims of religion are so at odds with what we know about the path of human evolution and the natural sciences, genetics, etc, that it becomes frustrating over time that such claims derived from a literal Genesis still persist in 2024.

Your good self and many other types of Christians would have manny1970 believe that Adam and Eve were the first humans, this then suggests that brothers and sisters procreated, then maybe parents coupled with their children, certainly first cousins over and over again in some incestuous feed-back loop. Then to counteract what we know about the effects of interbreeding we are told that humans were more perfect then and could cope with a bit of inbreeding. When religion gets stuff wrong it then has to build these back-stories to try to substantiate something that was never meant to be understood as literal in the first place.

Do you really think this is how God Created humans? Why not Create a breeding pool of humans so that interbreeding didn't occur, God could have done that, right. Or humans could have evolved from less refined forms and some small group had a genetic advantage, dominated the gene pool and that led to the humanity we have today.

The claims made by religion are not sacred cows and they are just as worthy of truthful investigation as any other proposed truth.

And regarding those gems, go back to the original descriptions and names given of those gems and then follow the translations and it becomes clear that the translations may or may not be correct. The truth of God does not hang on John naming gems that refract light, it's interesting and it may very well be another evidence for divine intervention but it just as well may be a beat-up.